|
So I ask a final question before I commit to buying an SSD. Initially i was stuck between either getting a 64gb or a 128gb SSD and most of the replies are actually infavour of getting a 128gb one for longer term purposes and to not get constrained with disk capacity. [I'm now pretty set on a 128gb SSD]
I know you say you're set on a larger size, but I feel that I should at least give my input incase it holds any relevance for you.
I too, when I first bought an SSD for my old machine, bought a larger capacity drive. I bought the "OCZ Vertex 2E (285 MB/s read 275 MB/s write)" drive, a 120 GB model. This, in comparison to the 5400rpm drive I had before was absolutely astonishing; I could load Windows in 20 seconds rather than 3-5 minutes and thought life couldn't get any better.
When I recently built a new PC, I took the advice everyone was giving me and instead of ignoring it like I did previously, I acted on it and bought 2 smaller drives. I bought 2 "OCZ Vertex 3 (525 MB/s read, 475 MB/s write)" drives, 60 GB models; and put them in Raid 0 and I can tell you for sure that the difference is against absolutely astonishing. I would have bought 4, but my budget couldn't quite stretch to the extra.
Now, I know you might be set on the 128GB model but hear me out.
For sake of argument, we'll assume that the drive I had in my old PC was also a Vertex 3 (so that the speed difference isn't quite so dramatic). If I'd have got just the 1 "Vertex 3 120 GB" I'd be sat at 525 MB/s read, 475 MB/s write. However, I have 2 smaller drives equalling the same capacity as the larger drive for pretty much the same price (give or take £5-10), and I have them in Raid 0 which means (because with SSDs, Raid striping produces an almost linear increase in performance) I'm at 1050 MB/s read and 950 MB/s write and boy does the difference show. If I'd have had the budget, I'd have got 4 instead of 2; I strongly recommend you consider it. It's actually amazing.
tl;dr Get smaller drives and put them in Raid 0. Same price, same capacity, much faster.
|
Just got a SSD myself and am liking it so far.
Hopefully my thinking process can help you out if you are still undecided. I really wanted to go with a drive made by a company who makes the flash themselves. (as opposed to a manufacturer who purchases flash chips, puts them in a box and then slaps their label on it). This left me to choose between Intel or Samsung. I ended up going with an Intel 320 80GB drive for about $80.
Newegg rotates their sales/rebates every couple of days, so subscribe to their newsletter and when one goes on sale, check it out.
|
On January 23 2012 17:11 chrisdunnbirch wrote:Show nested quote +So I ask a final question before I commit to buying an SSD. Initially i was stuck between either getting a 64gb or a 128gb SSD and most of the replies are actually infavour of getting a 128gb one for longer term purposes and to not get constrained with disk capacity. [I'm now pretty set on a 128gb SSD] For sake of argument, we'll assume that the drive I had in my old PC was also a Vertex 3 (so that the speed difference isn't quite so dramatic). If I'd have got just the 1 "Vertex 3 120 GB" I'd be sat at 525 MB/s read, 475 MB/s write. However, I have 2 smaller drives equalling the same capacity as the larger drive for pretty much the same price (give or take £5-10), and I have them in Raid 0 which means (because with SSDs, Raid striping produces an almost linear increase in performance) I'm at 1050 MB/s read and 950 MB/s write and boy does the difference show. If I'd have had the budget, I'd have got 4 instead of 2; I strongly recommend you consider it. It's actually amazing. tl;dr Get smaller drives and put them in Raid 0. Same price, same capacity, much faster.
You don't have 1050 / 950 read/write. First of all, while raid 0 scaling for SSDs is very good, it's not quite linear in most cases. Secondly, the SATA3 bus has a 6 Gbps bandwidth, which translates into 750 MB/s including overhead. In practice that'll be sub-700.
Striping also increases the chance of data loss due to disk failure, which may be an issue for most people (as very few people have a decent backup policy). And I doubt if the real life performance difference of a raid 0 array of SSDs is really that noticable. Sure it may look nice in synthetic benchmarks, but how much do you actually notice for common computer tasks?
|
Oh thanks so much for all the replies, especially MisterFred! Thanks so much for putting the SSD jargon in layman's terms..
From the looks of the replies, It seems that there wont be much difference for a multimedia desktop user (doing web development, some audio/graphics and playing lotsa starcraft) if I were to go for the Async NAND.... quoting various users on performance that won't be visible as significant as switching from the HDD to SSD itself. So to sum it up, I should be getting in this priority - 1 being the capacity of SSD (I need to pick the SSD of the size i require frst), then 2 pick the 'fastest' and within most comfortable budget?
* I also want to add that my HDD is filling up and it feels like it's dying, and I refuse to buy a HDD because of the current jack up in prices, so I would like to get an SSD as a replacement for the HDD (OS, programs) to at the same time benefit from the speed increase so i can free up space on the HDD eventually to store more files. * - So I believe I am actually saying that I don't need the fastest SSD but I want a balance between value, performance (SSD vs HDD difference) and capacity.
As i was considering the ADATA S510, I came across another option which is the OCZ Agility 3 120GB.. the prices on these two are about the same. I don't think I need to be getting the higher end SSDs such as the OCZ Vertex3/ ADATA S511 series.... No doubt the crucial M4 has good reviews, but I feel the crucial M4 might just be too good for me? (i.e. its pretty steep in cost? - About $40 difference? Can the purchase of an M4 be still justified?)
Thanks everyone that have assisted me in sorting out my thoughts someway or another!
|
On January 23 2012 17:11 chrisdunnbirch wrote:Show nested quote +So I ask a final question before I commit to buying an SSD. Initially i was stuck between either getting a 64gb or a 128gb SSD and most of the replies are actually infavour of getting a 128gb one for longer term purposes and to not get constrained with disk capacity. [I'm now pretty set on a 128gb SSD] I know you say you're set on a larger size, but I feel that I should at least give my input incase it holds any relevance for you. I too, when I first bought an SSD for my old machine, bought a larger capacity drive. I bought the "OCZ Vertex 2E (285 MB/s read 275 MB/s write)" drive, a 120 GB model. This, in comparison to the 5400rpm drive I had before was absolutely astonishing; I could load Windows in 20 seconds rather than 3-5 minutes and thought life couldn't get any better. When I recently built a new PC, I took the advice everyone was giving me and instead of ignoring it like I did previously, I acted on it and bought 2 smaller drives. I bought 2 "OCZ Vertex 3 (525 MB/s read, 475 MB/s write)" drives, 60 GB models; and put them in Raid 0 and I can tell you for sure that the difference is against absolutely astonishing. I would have bought 4, but my budget couldn't quite stretch to the extra. Now, I know you might be set on the 128GB model but hear me out. For sake of argument, we'll assume that the drive I had in my old PC was also a Vertex 3 (so that the speed difference isn't quite so dramatic). If I'd have got just the 1 "Vertex 3 120 GB" I'd be sat at 525 MB/s read, 475 MB/s write. However, I have 2 smaller drives equalling the same capacity as the larger drive for pretty much the same price (give or take £5-10), and I have them in Raid 0 which means (because with SSDs, Raid striping produces an almost linear increase in performance) I'm at 1050 MB/s read and 950 MB/s write and boy does the difference show. If I'd have had the budget, I'd have got 4 instead of 2; I strongly recommend you consider it. It's actually amazing. tl;dr Get smaller drives and put them in Raid 0. Same price, same capacity, much faster.
chrisdunnbirch,
will i benefit from a RAID setup from lower end SSDs as well i.e. 2* 60GB Agility 3 series? This is indeed something looking at. I hope it's not too hard to have a RAID SSD setup going...
|
Adata S510 and Agility 3 are essentially the same drive, same with Adata S511 and Vertex 3 (the first pair is a SATA3 Sandforce with Asynchronous, the second pair is SATA3 Sandforce with Synchronous). Adata and OCZ basically just bought the same components from the same vendors, put them together, and slapped their own housing/brand on it. The only real difference is the company you're buying from and the quality of that company's customer support (should you need it)..
Is the Crucial M4 worth it? It is for folks who are worried about Sandforce's past bad history (not me, but concerns about Sandforce have been valid in the past for a minority of users). Other than that, no. Its performance should be near or a bit better the performance of the Synchronous SATA3 Sandforce drives.
Note also that most SSDs, like most hard drives, are sold as a bare drive, with no accompanying accessories. Many have a 'kit' that costs $10-15 more that will come with a SATA cable if you don't have a spare from when you bought your motherboard (~$3 bought separately), some funky metal bracket to turn a hard drive slot in a case into an SSD slot (unnecessary), and a CD with software that supposedly makes it easier to transfer the operating system to the new drive (I have no idea how well that works).
I probably wouldn't bother with RAID myself, unless maybe buying 256gb of capacity or more. 128gb drives are already faster in a lot of ways than 64gb (if you want an example, see this comparison between two crucial drives otherwise identical: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/426?vs=425 ) so RAID will probably help only those functions that aren't already held back by disk size, merely equalizing with the bigger drives on the functions that are. If you feel tech savvy enough to enable RAID, it's not going to hurt, just make sure you don't end up paying more for the same capacity. Also, remember you'll have to install an update to something or other (I think bios) Intel is coming up with to use TRIM in a raid array, which is supposed to come out in the next few months.
|
The extra speed from RAID 0 is not really useful or noticeable at all for consumer workloads. It's a different deal if you want really fast scratch space for uncompressed videos, but that's about it. What's more noticeable maybe is twice the failure rate.
|
On January 23 2012 03:25 nam nam wrote:
This is my order I used when I built a new computer a month ago:
1) SSD > HDD
2) Larger SSD > Smaller SSD
3) Faster SSD > Slower SSD
Going from hdd to ssd is the biggest difference. There is much bigger differences between an hdd and an ssd over a faster ssd and a slower ssd. Then I wanted one that I could fit everything I wanted and then some. I wouldn't want anything smaller than 120 GB, but that depends on how you use the computer. The last thing I looked at was the speed of the ssd where it comes down to how much you want to spend. As previous posters have said, if you have only had hdd's in the past you'd probably be happy with any ssd, regardless of speed.
Wow, great explanation. I've tried a few times to put this into words but never quite got it down so well. I like the way you put it! This is my priority list as well.
|
Here's a question for you guys. The last real PC I had was something like 10 years ago, and I hated having multiple physical drives. Usually the small one would fill up with random crap tmp files and OS stuff and start causing issues over time. Does this still happen today?
|
Thanks again MisterFred, each and every of your replies are really educational to me!
So now putting together the priority list of SSD purchase earlier posted by 'nam nam'
1) SSD > HDD
2) Larger SSD > Smaller SSD
3) Faster SSD > Slower SSD
I'd imagine there's also a budget factor regardless.
I'd guess I'll forgo the M4 since it has a bigger price tag and I am supposed to be paying for non Sandforce controller + Synchronous NAND (which from what most have said, won't be day and night difference unless if I am handling uncompressed video/extremely large files right? + besides performance benefits truly scale with the capacity of the SSD as seen in benchmarks, and so.. a 120+gb ssd is an absolute must here - not forgetting how much more programs you could potential install..)
So now I am pretty much looking at the options available to me and again from what Ive gathered, most of these SSDs in the same price range are pretty much the exact same thing (controller, NAND type, capacity, sata generation) and I need to be looking out for the best RMA/warranty policies it seems? I guess I will check out the warranty/rma policies by the local distributors and check their reputation out..
From the looks of it, I may most likely be going with a Agility3, [taking note that this is actually somewhat of a HDD replacement - but I felt since HDDs are jacked up thanks to the worldwide shortage, I may as well try out an SSD that would. (1) give me more space, and (2) boost the system's load times in general.]
Would appreciate feedback if my decision makes any sense to you people? Thanks & Regards!
|
On January 24 2012 02:56 NoSlack wrote:
Here's a question for you guys. The last real PC I had was something like 10 years ago, and I hated having multiple physical drives. Usually the small one would fill up with random crap tmp files and OS stuff and start causing issues over time. Does this still happen today?
This depends on how lazy you are.
|
On January 23 2012 14:47 Zariel wrote:
Been rolling out new PCs with OCZ Vertex 3 at my computer shop here.
So far, every customer has been very very impressed and none have had any issues with data loss, errors, or system problems.
SSDs are still relatively 'young' and havent reached the mature stage yet of reliability, but they are certainly worth the dollar.
I'll never look back on using a normal HDD.
This is the general impression I've heard from the people with SSDs that I've talked to.
Personally, I don't know if it is worth it. The 7200RPM SATA 3 drive in my laptop is more than fast enough and it's a 640GB drive. I think SSDs are going to evolve a lot in the next few years; become much larger, much cheaper, and very reliable. If you have lots of money, sure go SSD. But if you're on a budget, I'd say go standard HDD and upgrade when the next gen SSDs come out. If I am able to scrape the money together to build a desktop for myself later this year as I want to, I know I'll be staying with standard HDD.
On January 24 2012 03:35 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 02:56 NoSlack wrote:
Here's a question for you guys. The last real PC I had was something like 10 years ago, and I hated having multiple physical drives. Usually the small one would fill up with random crap tmp files and OS stuff and start causing issues over time. Does this still happen today? This depends on how lazy you are.
Lmao I don't even know what to say to this guy's question.
|
I have no idea what NoSlack is asking, but I think its kinda off topic. Would appreciate if people can tell me if my final thoughts are sound? !!  Thanks again!
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
